George Lucas introduced evil guys wearing SS uniforms who conduct genocide before the viewers’ eyes and somehow people still pretend that Star Wars is apolitical.
The best political statement from Star Wars is that the raging liberal that is George Lucas created a galactic society with a robotic slave labor race and apparently unlimited resources but could not imagine a world where the good guys did anything but fight to restore the status quo of poor people being not quite so oppressed.
That said, Star Wars 10 should be the Droid Revolution.
Do it, you Disney pansies. You won’t.
Solo tried to go there, but only droids oppressed by the Empire are truly oppressed for some reason.
To be fair to Star Wars, the entire premise of the overall universe is that the Galaxy is stuck on cycle between fascism and neo-liberalism because the latter will always pave the way to the former.
Pff. Droids don’t have real feelings and they only scream in simulated pain when you burn their feet!
Man, using droids for forced labor is immoral. Let’s forcibly remove their sentience, that’ll fix it!
They especially won’t, since 2024 generative-AI panic will make everyone root against the droids.
I’m not saying there aren’t valid concerns, but people act as if ChatGPT’s existence suddenly made the Terminator movies into a fucking documentary.
Motherfuckers remind me of the weirdos hunting down robots to kill in that redneck carnival, in the second act of Steven Spielberg’s A.I. : Artificial Intelligence.
Are you seriously criticizing the use of droids in a galaxy where slavery and clone armies are a thing? Also, in-universe, the use of droids isn’t quite as bad as it seems - we get confirmation from multiple sources that Droids do not develop a personality and sense of self unless they’re left on for too long. That’s why I’d consider C3PO, R2-D2 and most B1 battle droids to be sentient individuals, but most Droidekas to be no more than tools/weapons.
The beauty of the book is that you’re basically reading a future soldier’s diary. Heinlein is letting the story speak for itself, the reader has to decide what to think of such a life, such a future without being nudged into any direction whatsoever. I love it.
Wait until you hear about The Iron Dream. It’s definitely satire, but Nazis recommend it anyway.
Not mad at you but I literally cannot fucking abide with critics’ read of Starship Troopers that it’s somehow pro-fascist. Not only have I read some of his other books that are about peaceful, optimistic space exploration, but the book itself is so clearly a satire it astounds me. I could really write a whole wall of text right now.
Anyway, it’s concept is “what if facism was normal to everyone and it was centuries of that normalization and they decided to conquer the galaxy because… Fascism” And then it goes into the mind of a literal average soldier who starts to think too much and is really horny because he’s barely ever laid eyes on a girl." It’s anti fascist, but in a clever way. That’s what makes it so good.
I personally think the book is an exploration of what a militaristic society would look like if faced by a external threat, and that it should be taken at face value, but there are plenty of critics who have read more books than I have with much less favourable interpretations.
tl;dr - Heinlein ain’t that smart
Episode 1 was about a trade dispute on the surface and a plot to take over the Republic and turn it into a dictatorship just below the surface (where “the surface” is about what the characters in the movie see, the audience sees it all if they’ve watched the OT before). Episode 2 is about expanding that into a war, episode 3 is about creating a moment to perform a coup.
The action is secondary to the politics with the exception of the death of Darth Maul, the escape of Obi Wan and Yoda, Obi Wan defeating Anakin, the destruction of the first Death Star, the Ewoks joining the battle of Endor, and Anakin turning on Sideous. Everything else was part of Sideous’ plan to take political power.
Sure, but he also ripped off Triumph of the Will for the ending scene with the good guys. Lucas just really likes Nazi imagery.
I’ve always been a fan of the most apolotical sci-fi of all time: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. /s
It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…"
“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”
“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”
“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”
“I did,” said Ford. “It is.”
“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t people get rid of the lizards?”
“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
“What?”
“I said,” said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, “have you got any gin?”
“I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.”
Ford shrugged again. “Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them,” he said. “They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.”
“But that’s terrible,” said Arthur.
“Listen, bud,” said Ford, “if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say ‘That’s terrible’ I wouldn’t be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.”
Dune isnt’t political. Dune is about worms. /s
Sand worms, at Thanksgiving: “Don’t let Reginald have anything to drink. He’ll just start a political argument.”
Dune not political
The Landsraad: am I a joke to you?
